10 Centavos

Portugal's bronze 10 centavos series ran through nearly three decades of the Estado Novo dictatorship, a period when Salazar kept the escudo artificially stable through fiscal austerity so strict it bordered on deflationary. Low-denomination coins circulated hard and long under that regime — purchasing power was deliberately suppressed for the rural poor, and small change moved through hands constantly.

The 1942 start date is telling: wartime metal pressures across Europe forced many nations to reformulate or abandon bronze entirely, yet Portugal, officially neutral and retaining colonial trade routes, managed to maintain the alloy throughout.